“I was soon asleep,” said Mrs. Peyton, again feeling in her handbag, “and it seemed only a few minutes later—though I know now it was several hours—when I found myself wide awake. I suppose it was the lack of fresh air that awoke me. I’m accustomed to sleeping with the windows open.
“I was on the point of getting up to open a window when, all at once, my blood seemed to freeze. I discovered, quite suddenly, I was not alone in the room!”
Mrs. Peyton paused and drew from the handbag a sheet of blue linen notepaper. Nervously creasing the paper in her slender white fingers, she continued, with heightening agitation, her large brown eyes earnestly watching the detective’s face: “I won’t deny, Mr. Berry, that I was frightened. In fact, I confess that I was so terrified I seemed utterly powerless to move or speak. I had always supposed if I ever should see a ghost I would feel no fear whatever. But now that I found myself actually looking at one—or at least looking at what, in that frightful moment, I potently believed to be one—I was petrified with terror.
“It was sitting at my desk, right where I’d been sitting all evening, and its back was toward me. The moon had risen and was shining through the windows, brightening the room with a pale half-light.
“The figure at the desk appeared to be writing. In fact, I could hear the scratching of the pen. I could also hear the ticking of a small clock on the desk. That’s how still everything was.
“Well, it sat there writing—a blurred, shapeless object in the silvery moonlight—for I don’t know how long. It seemed an age! And all the time I was conscious—terrifyingly so—that I was alone in that great house with it!”
Mrs. Peyton paused and took the photograph from the desk.
“Instinctively, I tried to scream,” she went on, “but my throat was parched and I seemed unable to utter a sound. However, I must have made some sort of noise, for the thing suddenly turned and looked at me over its shoulder. And for the first time, I saw its face.”
“What was the face like?” asked Barry.